Performers

Buy This

About

Duo Stephanie and Saar’s Beethoven Dialogues, the second New Focus release following their critically acclaimed Bach Crossings, recasts three of Beethoven’s iconic op. 18 set of string quartets in transcriptions that illuminate fascinating essential characteristics of these works.

Duo Stephanie and Saar’s Beethoven Dialogues, the second New Focus release following their critically acclaimed Bach Crossings, contains three piano four hands transcriptions of Beethoven’s iconic Op. 18 set of string quartets. It is fascinating to hear this timeless material lifted out of its original context and instrumentation and placed onto a keyboard, and reveals much about the core strength and malleability of Beethoven’s writing. Movements that are fleet and light in the string quartet may become more deliberate, exposing the harmonic motion in a different way, such as the opening Allegro con brio from the Bflat Major quartet, Op. 18 no. 6. Music that in the string quartet version is broadly expressive becomes more reflective and introspective when mapped onto the piano, such as the Adagio affetuoso ed appassionato second movement of the F major Op. 18 no. 1 quartet. Despite the early date of composition of these works in Beethoven’s career, in these piano versions, one hears many hints of the late piano works and even some foreshadowing of the resignation and wisdom of his late string quartets.

With the growth of the keyboard in the nineteenth century, transcriptions of prominent works, whether for orchestra, string quartet, or another combination, became a popular way for well off music lovers to get to know the repertoire in lieu of hearing performances in their original instrumentations. These transcriptions by Hugo Ulrich and Robert Wittman skillfully adapt the famous op. 18 set for four hands, thinning out dense textures and creatively solving doubling issues while preserving Beethoven’s original intent.

Duo Stephanie and Saar have been praised for their “beautifully understated performances” (NY Times) and “elegance and subtlety” (Baltimore Sun) and have recently appeared in a special collaboration with the New World Symphony in a new arrangement of Stravinsky’s Petrouchka, on the prestigious Dumbarton Oaks series in Washington D.C., and in a repeat invitation to perform on the Portland International Piano Festival in Oregon.

Engineer: Ryan Streber
Producer: Dan Lippel and Duo Stephanie and Saar
Recorded at Oktaven Audio, October 12, 2013 and November 7, 2013

DUO Stephanie and Saar

Pianists Stephanie Ho and Saar Ahuvia collaborate as DUO Stephanie and Saar in performances noted for their artistic versatility, elegance and intellectual curiosity.Their 2016 performance at Makrokosmos Project in Portland, OR led Oregon Arts Watch to proclaim that “in the hands of (Ho & Ahuvia) the work (Philip Glass’ Four Movements) emanated a sheer joy of piano sound.” Also noted was their “masterly” performance of George Crumb’s Otherworldly Resonances which “scintillated with dense tintinnabulations reminiscent of Olivier Messiaen’s battiest religious ecstasies.”

The duo’s 2015 performance at the Sarajevo Chamber Music Festival featured George Crumb’s dazzling Celestial Mechanics for amplified piano and other cutting-edge American works to international acclaim by Radio Sarajevo. “Stephanie and Saar’s last night’s performance once again recalled all the epithets of elegant and innovative, that have been following them throughout their career.” In celebration of György Kurtág’s 90th birthday in 2015, DUO Stephanie and Saar toured with “Hommage à J.S.B.”, a program that featured Kurtág’s Játékok alongside selections from Bach’s Art of Fugue. Their program also featured the dazzling four hand transcription of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Quartet in C Major, Op. 59 No. 3 “Razumovsky.”

Other recent performances include Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos, K. 365 with Musikkreis Horgen (Switzerland), PianoForte Salon Live on Chicago’s WFMT 98.7, Dranoff 2 Piano Foundation’s “Film Goes Classical: A 2 Piano Celebration of the Movies” at Miami’s Coral Gables Arts Cinema and a live concert on All Classical Portland’s Thursdays @ Three.

As probing recording artists, the duo explores repertoire with concomitant classical and contemporary sensibilities. Beethoven Dialogues, their 2014 album featuring Beethoven Quartets Op. 18 Nos. 1, 4 and 6 in rarely heard four hand arrangements, was performed in its entirety at New York City’s (le) poisson rouge and chosen as Album of the Week on WQXR. Bach Crossings, the duo’s 2012 album featuring György Kurtág’s illuminating transcriptions of Bach, continues to receive acclaim. International Piano Magazine states, “It is clear from the precision and elegant phrasing on this disc that this is a tight partnership between..."

Highlights from their eclectic programming include a jazz-inspired concert at the South Miami- Dade Cultural Arts Center featuring the world premiere of Fantasia de Très Mundos by Cuban- American jazz pianist Martin Bejerano. In celebrating the 100th anniversary of Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, DUO Stephanie and Saar toured Rite in four-hand, two-piano and mixed ensemble arrangements. Multiple collaborations with Michael Linville and the New World Symphony Percussion Consort featured Linville’s own arrangement of Igor Stravinsky’s Petrouchka and André Boucourechliev’s aleatoric fantasy piece Archipel I. The duo takes special pride in a performance at the residence of the United States Ambassador in Berlin, Germany, featuring works by Henry Martin (US), Avner Dorman (Israel) and Felix Mendelssohn.

DUO Stephanie and Saar are the artistic directors of Makrokosmos Project, a music festival in Portland, Oregon dedicated to contemporary American music and performances by Oregon-based performers and composers.(www.makrokosmosproject.org). Saar Ahuvia, a native of Israel, studied at Israel's Tel Aviv Academy and Switzerland's Schaufhausen Conservatory before coming to the United States to pursue a Graduate Performance Diploma with Leon Fleisher at Peabody Institute. Stephanie Ho, of Taiwanese descent, grew up in Portland, Oregon before obtaining degrees from Oberlin College and Northwestern University. She received a Graduate Performance Diploma from Peabody Institute, under the direction of Julian Martin.

Reviews

WQXR

The husband-and-wife team of Stephanie Ho and Saar Ahuvia – Duo Stephanie and Saar for short – have made a name for their thoughtful, resourceful programming. Their third album together is a case in point, devoted to four-hand arrangements of Beethoven's early string quartets, the Opus 18 cycle (Nos. 1, 4 and 6). The transcriptions, by Hugo Ulrich and Robert Wittmann, help us hear Beethoven’s writing in a fresh new light. Dense textures breathe anew, bold harmonic shifts are more exposed and melodies and counter-melodies are clarified.

Buffalo News

Beethoven, “Dialogues” performed by Duo Stephanie and Saar (New Focus Recordings). The idea behind this high-minded disc had potential. Duo Stephani and Saar, playing four-hand piano, give us three of Beethoven’s early-period string quartets Op. 18 – No. 1, No. 4 and No. 6. I love anything arranged for piano. It can always be counted on to bring out new things in the music. And it’s heartwarming how this disc’s creators pay homage to the lead of visionary teachers including Karl Ulrich Schnabel and Leon Fleisher. Listening to the music, though, I was a little disappointed. On the one hand the novelty was there – I could barely recognize the music, even though I’ve heard the quartets a lot and paid close attention to them. On the other hand, the music sounded mechanical. It worked as a kind of exercise, but you get no sense that it is living and breathing the way you get when you hear a string quartet play it. Whether that’s the fault of the arrangers (Hugo Ulrich and Robert Wittmann) or the performers, or whether the quartets just don’t work on the piano, I’m not sure. Playing the string quartets as collaborative piano pieces does sound like an avenue worth exploring.

(Mary Kunz Goldman)

International Piano Magazine

Before mechanical sound reproduction, large-scale music was often first experienced in piano transcriptions, some created by journeymen composers of talent. One such, Hugo Ulrich (1827-1872), born in Opole, Silesia, struggled financially, creating a piano trio (dedicated to his mentor, music editor Siegfried Dehn) and symphonies before resorting to transcriptions of symphonies and other works as subsistence labour. Of these faithful, yet pianistically rewarding works by Ulrich, Stephanie Ho and Saar Ahuvia have chosen transcriptions -- done in collaboration with Robert Wittmann, another now-forgotten composer -- of three early Beethoven string quartets for piano four hands.

These transcriptions are based on a profound understanding of melody and the sublte progress of musical ideas, conveyed in a refined fashion by Ulrich and his partner. Likewise, Ho and Ahuvia prove to be uncommonly thoughtful and co-operative in these intimate efforts. The pianists themselves observe in CD booklet notes that the works contain Beethovenesque 'bravura passagework, powerful symphonic cadences, [and] diabolical four-part fugues.' These challenges they meet with abundant skill and self-effacing mastery. Ahuvia explains that he discovered these transcriptions when Leon Fleisher, his teacher at Baltimore's Peabody Institute, ordered his students to examine them as a way of revivifying Beethoven's spirit at the keyboard beyond his piano sonatas. Indeed, this is a transcendent reminder of past four-handed glories, following the Prague Piano Duo's vivid recording of the same composer's Seventh Symphony in Ulrich's transcription (on Praga SACD PRD/DSD 250219).

Classics Today

Before recordings and radio were invented, the piano represented one’s home entertainment center. If you wanted to hear a Beethoven string quartet, you had to seek out a live quartet performance, or you could simply play the piece on the piano, usually in an arrangement for one piano four hands. Thousands of these arrangements existed, although few remain in print. In 1980 Dover reprinted the Hugo Ulrich and Robert Wittmann Beethoven Quartet transcriptions. They are skillfully wrought for the piano, yet manage to retain the flavor of Beethoven’s original timbres in regard to textural transparency and voice leading, losing nothing in translation from strings to keyboard. What is more, they are rewarding to play and to hear, which is not always the case with four-hand arrangements.
Stephanie Ho and Saar Arhuvia began investigating the four-hand Beethoven quartets at the suggestion of their teacher Leon Fleisher, who encouraged his students to probe Beethoven beyond the iconic 32 solo piano sonatas. Aside from their impeccably calibrated ensemble work on all levels, Ho and Arhuvia bring a mindful, chamber-like aesthetic to these scores in terms of motivic interplay, balances, and dynamic scaling. Tempos for faster movements never exceed what strings can do comfortably; if anything, they tend to fall on the conservative side. Yet this allows for the Op. 18 No. 6 Scherzo’s cross-rhythmic phrases to settle and breathe over the bar lines, and the Op. 18 No. 4 Scherzoso quasi allegretto’s alternating staccato and sforzando markings to effectively register. On the other hand, most quartets can handle Op. 18 No. 1’s Allegro finale at a brighter, more incisive clip. By contrast, the Op. 18 No. 1 and 6 Adagios benefit not only from the duo’s vibrant pace but also the uniformity with which long lines pass back and forth between the pianists. Aside from a tinge of stridency in the loudest passages, the duo’s refined and intelligent interpretations are well recorded. - Jed Distler, Jan. 20, 2015

Related Albums

Search

Menu

About

New Focus Recordings is an artist led collective label featuring releases in contemporary creative music of many stripes, as well as new approaches to older repertoire. The label was founded by guitarist Dan Lippel, composer/engineer/producer Ryan Streber, and composer Peter Gilbert in 2004, formed …Read More …